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With a PhD in Romance Languages,
22 years of teaching experience, and 13 years as Portuguese Program
Coordinator, I feel qualified and would be honored to assist AATSP as
Portuguese representative.

I have a history of extensive
committee service, including two rounds at Faculty Senate, chair of Faculty
Development, and Retention, Tenure and Promotion (RTP) among other
committees. Statewide, I am part of the Advisory Board for Dual Language
Immersion Research and a member of the Portuguese Dual Language Steering
Committee.

In terms of research, though
lately my focus has been on program development, technology in the classroom,
and business Portuguese, my dissertation and publications were on representing
the nation in contemporary (women’s) literature and cinema, and before 1992 I
worked with discourse analysis and oral language. In sum, I have
ventured into different topics in a quest to answer some of my personal
questions as well as better engage with the students in my classroom – and
hopefully my experience can be of further service to AATSP.

My name is Débora Ferreira and I’m
a candidate for the position of AATSP’s Portuguese Representative. I’m an
Associate Professor and Program Coordinator at Utah Valley University, with a
PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Georgia.

I first presented at AATSP in
2002, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since then AATSP has been to me a
place where I re-encounter many of my dear colleagues, learn and share about
teaching practices and academic research. Nowadays I have been
deeply involved with Program building, course development, and promoting
Portuguese proficiency and discoveries, well aware of the recent demand for
Portuguese worldwide. In response to that growth, and having
brought the Brazilian Proficiency Exam to our institution, I see the need to
continually invest in assessment efforts, including revitalizing the National
Portuguese Exam.

K-12 immersion programs have been
blooming in my state, and it is transforming the face of Foreign Language
acquisition, soon to have an effect in Higher Education’s offerings of
classes. I responded to that by becoming a member of both the Portuguese
Steering Committee and the Dual Language Immersion Research Advisory Board,
which encompasses many languages.

Though my research has veered to
focus on the needs expressed above, I have been for many years interested in
issues of national identity and self representation in literature and movies,
and have previously published a book and a few articles on that.

If elected I would work to support
AATSP’s mission of promoting the teaching of Portuguese and Spanish and
encouraging the collaboration between colleagues from K through 16 in
furthering the learning of and pursuit of linguistic and cultural proficiency
in Foreign Languages.